


boy oh boy (i love it when I fall for that)

by rainbowshoes



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Alternate Universe - Professors, M/M, Professor Tony, Secret Identity, Sort Of, professor bucky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-02
Updated: 2020-01-02
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:23:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22088587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainbowshoes/pseuds/rainbowshoes
Summary: For sopherfly. the prompt was:Modern AU. Bucky, a professor at the local college, meets Tony Stark, the new head of the Department of Physics. Despite having enough on his plate with several classes to teach and a pile of papers to grade, Bucky finds himself falling hard.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Tony Stark
Comments: 6
Kudos: 180
Collections: 2019 WinterIron_Holiday_Exchange





	boy oh boy (i love it when I fall for that)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TheSopherfly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSopherfly/gifts).



When Bucky walked into the classroom, he wasn't surprised to see a few students already present. Some of them had lingered from the last class that had taken place in the room, but the other few were his own students. He didn't have a classroom of his own, not really, and simply jumped from room to room - sometimes by the term, sometimes by the week. Yet he always had a few students that beat him there, no matter where it was. Keener and Parker were the two who almost never failed to arrive before him, sometimes having to wait out in the hall so Bucky could come and unlock the door, depending on whether or not the last person to use the room had locked it. He nodded to them as he passed where they were both standing around what looked to be Parker's bag as he frantically dug through it. 

"Shit, shit, shit," Parker was mumbling. Bucky dropped his things at the desk and hooked in his laptop to the overhead before dragging out his notes for this lesson and setting them up on the podium. He rarely stood there, but it was helpful to have a point of reference, to have a place to retreat and look over his notes again when he, invariably, got off task. 

"What's the problem, Parker?" Bucky asked, settling himself on the outside edge of the desk. 

"This dumbass left his laptop in our last class," Keener answered, rolling his eyes. He flopped into the desk in front of Parker's and kicked his feet out into the aisle. "I already texted Tony to bring it, dude, just chill out already." 

Parker hid his face in both hands. "God, Harls, he hasn't even had coffee yet this morning. He'll forget. Or go to the wrong room." He groaned and sank into the desk chair. "Or, you know, just embarrass me in front of everyone." 

Keener rolled his eyes and mostly ignored Parker's lamenting as he dragged his own laptop out of his bag. Bucky figured that it wasn't actually the end of Parker's world, and if someone was bringing his laptop he'd be fine, before returning to his podium and flipping through the notes from the previous week. He hadn't mentioned everything he'd hoped to have gotten to, and it was mostly Keener's fault. 

They liked to get him off topic and distract him entirely too much. Not that he blamed them, exactly, but it was a pain in the ass when he was supposed to be talking about the Cold War and all his students wanted to hear about was what they  _ thought  _ were fictional first-hand accounts of the Second World War. He was honestly lucky none of them had cottoned on to who he really was. 

He'd literally never live it down if his students found out he was over a hundred years old. 

Hell, half of them gave him shit for not knowing was a  _ meme _ was - but even once he'd started using them, they still laughed at him. 

He didn't much care. He was having fun learning the new lingo. The first time he used an expression always got a riotous response, anyway. He tried to save those for the end of class when it wouldn't derail things too much. He loved doing it, even if he was made fun of for it. 

The rest of his students began to trickle through the door, and the students that had belonged to the previous class finally left. It wasn't a big class, barely thirty students, but Bucky enjoyed teaching it regardless. He hadn't known shit about the Cold War, so once he'd been thawed out and had his head fucked with enough to work correctly and not flip out because a series of innocuous Russian words, he'd learned. Became obsessed was probably a better descriptor. Now he knew just about everything there was to know, and one of his 'essays' - which honestly read more like a conspiracy theory and tied in what very little he remembered from his own actions during that time - had gotten a lot of attention from the right people. And now he taught a class on the Cold War three times a week - and three classes on historical military strategy twice a week. A light load compared to some of the others, but he still felt like he was drowning in work sometimes. He didn't have a TA to grade his papers, after all. 

He’d moved back to his podium to set out his notes for the period and to get his presentation going as his students filed in when he noticed someone who most certainly didn’t belong in his class. Bucky absolutely had a few “non-traditional” students who were older than their counterparts (but still younger than Bucky himself), but this man wasn’t one of them. Short, with rich, dark brown hair graying along his temples, wide, black-rimmed glasses, a fussy, distinct goatee, and slacks with a vintage MIT sweatshirt - and, probably the most remarkable, slippers that were shaped like little goats. Bucky snorted a small laugh and ducked his head when the man looked over at him. He was short and slim and had the biggest brown eyes Bucky had ever seen on a person. 

He watched from behind his podium while he pretended to do something on his laptop as the man walked over to where Keener and Parker were sitting. Parker was lying with his head down on the desk and Keener was already cracking up, silently, as the man grabbed Parker’s hood and drug it over his head and yanked tight the one string he could reach. Parker flailed and yelped as he jerked upright, wide eyes darting around until they landed on the man who’d just done it. Then he smiled, bright and happy, before rolling his eyes with the utmost fondness. It made Bucky’s chest hurt a little. He could remember Steve giving him the same sort of look a lifetime ago. 

“Here, Pete,” the man said, offering up a laptop from the nice, leather bag he had over one shoulder. “You owe me coffee, kiddo.” 

“Sure,” Parker said, his grateful smile still firmly in place. “You’re a lifesaver.”   


The man shrugged his shoulders and grinned. “We all have those days, kid. Sometimes you shoot your shot and they say no and then you find out they’re engaged to the person who tried to punch a hole in your chest three weeks ago.” 

Bucky frowned hard.  _ What the actual hell? Who was this old twink, anyway? _

And then Keener began to laugh his ass off, and Bucky groaned softly before pinching the bridge of his nose with his left hand. 

“I said that out loud, didn’t I?” he asked the universe without looking up. 

“You sure did,” the man said, a hint of a laugh in his voice. It sounded almost like a reference to something Bucky had heard before, but not quite the right words. He shook off the impression and finally dropped his hand. The man was standing in front of his podium now. “You must be Professor Barnes. The kids have mentioned you.”

“That’s my super hot dad,” Keener said, loudly enough to travel across the entire classroom. 

Parker made an offended noise in the back of his throat. “You can’t say that, he’s my  _ dad _ .” 

The man in front of Bucky just laughed quietly, even as Keener gave Parker a look like Parker had suddenly grown a second head. It was, admittedly, pretty funny, and Bucky found himself trying to smother his own laugh. 

“Dr. Tony Carbonell,” the man said, holding out his hand. “Or, you know, you can call me the hot, old twink. Either way.” He winked as Bucky shook his hand, and Bucky couldn’t quite stop the blush from coloring his cheeks. 

“I have no filter, sorry. And yeah. Call me Bucky.” He offered a small smile, and he sort of wished he remembered exactly what he’d done so long ago to charm so many women into his bed. He didn’t recall any of that, nothing beyond dancing and maybe a goodnight kiss, but the sources he’d consulted on himself all agreed - he’d been a ladies man. 

(Problem was, the memories he  _ did _ have of those sorts of dalliances were never with women.)

“It’s nice to finally put a face to the name,” Tony said with his own smirk - and it looked much more like the come-get-me smirk Bucky had been trying for. “Harley said he likes your class more than mine.”

“Because physics is boring when you already know most of it,” Harley complained as he rocked back on the back two legs of his chair. Bucky grabbed an eraser from the podium and threw it at one of the legs, making Harley’s chair fall back to all four legs.

“Stop with the chair,” Bucky said, narrowing his eyes at Keener. “You’ll tear up the carpet.” 

“Nice shot,” Tony murmured. He tilted his head to the side as he studied Bucky. “That’s some incredibly precise throwing. Can you do it again?”

Bucky rolled his eyes. “Yes, I can. I can hit anything with pretty much anything. Pretty sure Keener has videos of it from the first week of class.” He flicked his left hand in Keener’s direction, and he nodded his agreement. “Twerps kept demanding I throw more things and we didn’t get anything done that day. Should have realized it would be a pattern.” The problem with that little rant, he knew, was that he didn’t sound nearly as put-out as he was pretending. Even if his students this period really did annoy the piss out of him sometimes, he also really liked most of them, and they’d shown they really did care about getting a good grade in his class. Most of them came to his office hours nearly every time his door was open, and he wound up with small tutor-groups. Sometimes he felt like he got more accomplished during his office hours than he did in class. 

Tony grinned widely at him. “I might ask to borrow you for an experiment tomorrow, then, if you’re up for it.”

“Uh, sure?” Bucky blinked a few times, confused by the request and how… suggestive it had sounded. “Just let me know when.” He had memories of evening spent with men, sure, but it wasn’t like he’d had the time for any of that lately. He’d been entirely too fucked in the head, initially, for anything like that, and by the time he was sort of okay - he knew he’d never be completely fine - he was so busy with his new teaching job that he hadn’t bothered to make an attempt. 

Tony grabbed one of Bucky’s pens and scribbled his phone number across the top of Bucky’s lecture notes. It was a good thing he had digital copies to post for this class - he’d have hated to scan in the phone number as well, or cover it up before scanning it in. 

“Text me so I have your number and we’ll figure out a date.” Then Tony winked and turned to walk away. 

Bucky couldn’t help but stare at his ass until he was through the door. 

“Get a room,” Keener nearly shouted across the classroom. Bucky grabbed another piece of an eraser and threw it at him, which Keener ducked while laughing. 

“Okay, let’s get started, huh?” Bucky asked, starting the presentation and forcing himself to shift gears into the lecture. 

As soon as class was over, he dug his phone out of his pocket and sent a quick “hi its bucky” text to the number written across the front page of his lecture notes. Harley and Peter appeared at the podium just as he sent send, and he sighed a little, not surprised in the slightest. 

“Tony’s our dad,” Harley said, his hand tight on the strap of his backpack. “Well, in all the ways that count. Don’t string him along.”

Bucky blinked in surprise. He’d been about to respond that he’d never do anything like that - and that he was very much interested in Tony - but Peter spoke up before he could manage. 

“If you hurt him, we’ll be really upset. And we won’t be the only people.” 

“I got it,” Bucky said, holding both hands up in an ‘I surrender’ gesture. He wasn’t sure what else to say, not really. “It’s been a long damn time, but I don’t want to fuck this up.” It didn’t bother him to admit this to Keener and Parker. Between HYDRA and Shuri, he didn’t think he had any shame left. 

“Bring him coffee,” Keener said, then turned and began to walk out of the room. He stopped at the doors because Parker was still at the podium. 

“Don’t try to use him, either,” Parker said. Bucky had never seen him so intense and serious before. It reminded him entirely too much of a very young, still skinny and sick Steve. “He’s important to us, but also to a lot of other people.” 

“Jesus Christ,” Bucky muttered, rolling his eyes. “I don’t even know him yet, and I don’t know how things are going to go. If I fuck up, you have my permission to yell at me or whatever. But right now, this is literally nothing more than me helping out with a lecture.” He gave them both hard looks until Parker deflated, nodded, and slumped off to join Keener, who ruffled a hand through his hair before they walked out. 

“Sounds like something interesting is going on.” Bucky didn’t flinch, but it was a near thing. He turned to look at Natasha, who had snuck in and was standing against the wall behind him with her arms crossed over her chest. She gave him a slight smirk. She knew he hadn’t seen her come in. 

“I’m going to go help out with a physics lecture and the guy is hot,” Bucky said, a hint of complaint in his voice. “And Keener and Parker are weirdly protective of him.”

“Who is it?” Natasha asked, though it sounded like she already knew the answer.

Bucky began to gather his things and unhook his laptop. “Dr. Carbonell.”

Natasha snorted behind him. “I thought as much.” She walked closer and began to gather his notes for him. “He left you his number?” Bucky only nodded. “Enjoy it.” She immediately dropped the subject and began to talk to him about her latest assignment. It was nice, and he got to live vicariously through her experiences.

* * *

The next morning, Bucky got a text from Dr. Carbonell bright and early. He couldn’t quite stop himself from smiling down at his phone. They spoke briefly about availability, and Bucky was glad his own schedule wouldn’t interfere with the lecture he was supposed to attend. It was first thing in the morning, and Bucky was looking forward to it. 

When he arrived in the correct classroom, not only were Tony and Keener and Parker there, but Natasha was there, as well, and she was giving him a very knowing look. The surprising part was that Natasha seemed to know Tony very well, too. Bucky wasn’t nervous, though. He just had to throw some stuff and hit some other stuff. No big deal. 

It wasn’t much of a surprise when Tony was thoroughly distracted by his vibranium arm mid-way through Bucky throwing things at other things from more and more impossible angles until he finally missed (and Natasha told Tony in no uncertain terms that Clint would have been able to do it and Tony snapped back that Clint never came to do this demonstration for him anymore and Bucky wondered who the hell Clint was). He was good-natured about the poking and prodding at his arm, considering it was out of curiosity and not for any nefarious purpose. And because Tony wasn’t a dick about it. 

When class was over and all the students - and Natasha - had filed out of the room and Bucky was helping Tony put everything away, Tony finally stopped him and asked, “You wanna grab lunch? Not here.” He waved a hand through the air and made a face at the idea of it. Bucky was on the verge of arguing that there were a few places on campus that had some pretty decent food, but Tony had more to add. “In the city. There’s a really good restaurant with my actual name on it.” He grinned and shoved his papers into his back. “No relation, unfortunately, or I’d have charmed them out of some of their recipes. Come on, it’s good. And it’s on me.” 

Bucky relented and followed Tony out of the building. The restaurant was close, at least, and he would probably make it back to campus in time for his next lecture. He was having a hard time remembering that that was a thing he needed to do. He was honestly enjoying his time with Tony. He didn’t understand a lot of the physics stuff, sure, but Tony had a great sense of humor and had actively included Bucky in the lesson rather than just talking over and around him. 

By the time they were seated at a small table toward the back of the restaurant, Bucky thought about Keener and Parker. “You know, uh, Harley and Peter, they are extremely protective of you.” He sipped at his water and watched Tony’s eyebrow go up. 

“What did they say?” he asked, a little curious, a little cautious, a little amused. 

“Told me to bring you coffee and not to lead you on,” Bucky admitted. Tony made a face, and Bucky smiled a little. “I brought you coffee.” His smile grew as Tony tilted his head to the side in question. “I’m not leading you on, either.” He shifted in his seat a little, hoping Tony understood. 

He’d thought about it a lot last night, talked to Natasha, and had made up his mind this morning during Tony’s lesson. Tony was nice, and it had been a long damn time since he’d done anything with anyone that was fun and wasn’t only friendship. He’d taken stock of his mental health and decided he was in a good place. He’d had a great year and a half of teaching, he had settled nicely into the groove of things, and while he was often overwhelmed by how busy he could get, he knew someone like Tony would understand - would probably often find himself in the same position. 

“So,” Tony said, drawing out the word as he leaned back in his chair. “This is a date-date and not just a lunch meeting?” 

Bucky shrugged. “Do you want it to be?”

“What’s the difference?” Tony challenged, though there was a playful smile on his face.

“Well, instead of talking only about classes and the fact that I’m teaching Harley and Peter and they call you their dad, I figure we can talk about some other stuff, too. More personal stuff. If you want.” Bucky took another drink of his water and waited for Tony’s verdict. 

Tony hummed. “Sure, it’s a date.” He held up a finger. “But, only on the condition that we have a follow-up dinner date.”

Bucky grinned brightly. “Now that I can agree to.” 


End file.
